The 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

In which we consider the winner and two finalists, and how they reflect the period of this particular point in time.

Hi, Y’all! Glad You’re Here—

In my last two posts, I discussed the 2016 National Book Award Fiction longlist, my own misconceptions about the longlist and how, after further evaluation, I realized that it was one of the best longlists of the past decade. Today I wanted to take a look at the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which features two crossover books from the 2016 NBA list, Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett, and The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, as well as the novel The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan. For anyone who doesn’t know, the National Book Awards take place towards the end of each year, considering all of the books released within that calendar year, up until November 30th. The Pulitzer Prizes take place the following Spring, and consider the previous year’s releases. The NBA is looking for the best written book by an American writer, and the Pulitzer Prize is looking for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealign with American life. I think this distinction is important when considering why the Pulitzer might have overlooked other books from that year that one might have deemed more “deserving”, especially books popular on the NBA longlist and other lists highlighting major books of that year. I am always thinking about these two awards in relation to each other, and I feel like this year in particular is a perfect one to consider their relationship and how they have operated within the same literary landscape over the decades.

When we talk about what the Pulitzer Prize looks for in relation to books “preferably dealing with American life”, this idea obviously shifts considerably depending on where we are in history, what’s currently at the forefront of the national conversation relating to politics and identity, what’s currently “in” aesthetically, and who the panel of judges are. It’s hard to deny the impact of the political landscape on which books were considered more timely, which ones felt like a truer reflection of our state of the country. To be clear, I still think that one or all of these books could (and likely would) have made this list, even without the rise of Trump and the outright bigotry blasting from half of the country, but I do think it caused a heightened awareness, a realization from many people that these books weren’t discussing bygone issues but issues still relevant to the moment. People often treat writers as prophetic when they write about issues that feel timely, that just happen to come out when the world recognizes an issue, but the truth is, these writers were just aware that these problems were already there, ongoing, and it’s only that the public consciousness has just been made aware of it again.

Looking at the one book that wasn’t featured on the NBA list, The Sport of Kings, I think this is possibly the most traditional picks for the award, specifically because of how it situates itself within relation to the Pulitzer Prize and the American novel. This is a brick of a work, spanning decades and generations, a book that considers the legacy of our nations history by tracing the history of one family. It has the same sweep one might find in Steinbeck, small influences that feel Faulknerian—but more specifically, the influence of Faulkner on Toni Morrison. This is a book that feels deeply engrained in the canon of American literature, not just in its subject matter, but how it chooses to approach it, what influenced it. When the book came out, it was weirdly compared to such writers as Meg Wolitzer and Elena Ferrante—to those who love those writers, I’m sorry to disappoint, but I find those comparisons to be highly inaccurate. The book, if anything, is a direct response to the very idea of the “Great American Novel”. In a recent edition of William Faulkner’s Light in August, Morgan contributed a forward, where she discussed how the great American novel is no longer a noble literary quest, but a “self-aggrandizing masculinist invention’. She explains the flawed nature of the very idea of a Great American Novel, but also considers what these works actually have in common. To paraphrase, she says the works are too big, too much, too unwieldy, and that’s possibly part of their brilliance. In many ways, this feels like it is also a description of this novel.

There’s something a bit daunting, initially, about how Morgan reveals her world to the reader—she’s a beautiful writer, but she also describes just about everything under the sun, and at first, the reader might question why. It could almost feel unnecessary, superfluous. But as we slip deeper into the world, it begins to feel integral to the work itself. It creates an intimacy to this family and the world they inhabit, an intimacy that might otherwise not exist to the extent that it does. Stylistically, Morgan feels fully in control, even when we as the reader do not. The novel also operates without the self-consciousness we see with many other white writers attempting to write about racism. She isn’t pussyfooting around the actions of her white characters, isn’t cautious to a fault, in how she writes characters outside of her identity. You can’t approach this type of work unless you have a firm grasp on what it is you’re attempting to do, a confidence and the knowledge already gained and at the ready—Morgan, it would appear, has done her homework.

Though I found this work burdensome and overwhelming at times, I also greatly appreciated it and hope to eventually read her debut. I think that while it’s a little too ambitious, a little too unwieldy when compared to the books featured on the 2016 NBA list, it’s ambition and ability to explore the American life in the way it does makes it a perfect book for the Pulitzer Prize.

The other finalist from this year was Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett, which I covered in the last newsletter when it was longlisted for the NBA. I loved this novel, which manages to explore the impact of generational trauma, whiteness, queerness, and the complications of loving someone you cannot save. Haslett writes such fully realized characters, and I think this is the sole book to be considered a “realist” novel out of these three. The language doesn’t necessarily heighten the work into a type of magical realism or lead into the gothic, but operates as a pane of clear, freshly windexed glass through which to observe the story as it unfolds. Haslett’s polyphonic novel is one of the strongest I’ve read in that he has such a striking ability to capture such varied voices as he shifts between the perspectives of each character in this family. While the novel spans several decades, it is also the most clearly modern of the three books on this list, and I think because of that, has the ability to contribute more direct social commentary than the other two. Historical novels, by their very nature, limit the types of language that can be utilized. Once again, we see characters who are struggling to recognize the differences of others, recognize their own privilege. One of the son’s in the book is gay, and we see the ways the other characters at times can be dismissive of his experience, and the other brother is deeply aware of the legacy of racism in the U.S. and is constantly attempting conversations with his family, who seem a bit less interested, clearly uncomfortable having those conversations. Haslett doesn't try to apologize for his characters or explain away the reasons for their thoughts and actions—actually, I think this book, despite coming out before the myriad conversations revolving around the ‘trauma plot’, in some ways feels like a response to it, in that it never uses the trauma of this family as a plot device to explain away any of their actions or motives. It’s a nuanced, tender novel, and has, upon finishing, become one of my favorite books of all time.

The winner of this year was The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. I covered this one two weeks ago, but relating this to the Pulitzer specifically, I wanted to share what the Pulitzer committee had to say about their selection of this novel for the winner of this year:

“For a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America.”

Whitehead is one of the most talented and daring novelists working today. Each of his books is always surprising and takes a sharp turn from the previous effort, and it’s exciting to try to anticipate what he’ll come up with next. With The Underground Railroad, Whitehead pulls from a breadth of work that might not all have been considered part of the American literary canon, but is deeply grounded in the Black American experience throughout history. The opening pages of the book have obvious comparisons to works such as Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, but it’s where this book diverges, where he spins off into fantasy and various other genres, where his work takes on an exciting new energy.

Genre works, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, have always been known as the genres writers turn to when trying to address certain topics that they feel could be too difficult to look at head on. Whitehead doesn’t shy away from the subject matter here, but he does allow a sense of levity, not to avoid anything but to resist the temptation of so many writers to only exist in the trauma. He’s written a book that isn’t just about suffering, but allows his characters to exist in a space of hope. There’s something truly brilliant about what he does here, and what he’s continued to do following this work.

I think, in a way, each of these books feels like a reconsideration of the popularized narratives of the American canon, and also a confrontation of the ideas we’d been fed regarding whiteness, queerness, racism, and history. Writers have always done this—taken something and considered it from every angle, interrogating, inspecting, thinking about what is true and what is bull. While these novels might not have revealed something new so much as pointed something out that was already there, they came out at a time when the need to recognize these things felt as urgent as ever. When we think about what it means for a book to be about American life, we have to think about the type of life that we haven’t really seen fully represented, or that we’ve only seen represented through a certain lens. Not only that, of course, but the works have to be innovative, well crafted, exciting and thought provoking. They have to be so much.

It truly is impossible to write “The Great American Novel”—but it is possible to expand the canon, to include works that help us represent a more varied experience and that also expand our ideas about what narrative can do and be. I think the books of this list manage the near impossible task of being many things—works of art and works of resistance.

I haven’t read enough about the Pulitzer or read enough of the books featured over the years yet to have a strong point of view on them, but where there is crossover with these books and the NBA books, I wanted to take the opportunity to consider them from the perspective of both awards, and I hope you enjoyed my little deviation.

I’m wrapping up some reading for another newsletter coming soon, so stay tuned.

Until then,

XOXO